Week 2

Monday, September 24

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

New dad Dathan Ritzenhein is trying something different in Eugene, OR

As his two-year-old pet pug, Muenster, stood atop the large living-room ottoman barking wildly at the TV, 2004 10,000-meter Olympian Dathan Ritzenhein was handed new batteries by his pregnant wife, Kalin, to replace the old ones in the remote. 

“Hold on there, Muenster,” said Ritzenhein as the frenzied pup urged Dad to get on with the playing of Dog Sitter, one of his favorites DVDs.

Pugs are well known for their personalities, but Muenster was a one-dog highlight reel.

“We tried taking him to the park,” Ritz continued, “but people thought we were either killing or abusing him, ’cause he just screams when we bring out his soccer ball.”

To demonstrate, Ritz picked up Muenster, then kicked a blue and white ball in his direction. Muenster’s leg splayed out and he began yelping in an otherworldly pitch. Kalin had to back out of the room to suppress her convulsions of laughter; Dathan could barely hold Muenster, who was frantic to attack the ball. We weren’t surprised when Dathan told us that a pug owner once won the $100,000 prize on World’s Funniest Home Videos.

With the cable TV still not hooked up—nor the phone, for that matter—and boxes of their possessions filling most of the floor space, Dathan, Kalin, and Muenster were left with only their DVD collection to get them through their ongoing move to their new home in the South Hills section of Eugene, OR.

“We’ve got all six [sic] seasons of Seinfeld,” said Ritzenhein as Muenster continued yapping. “That’s all we’ve been watching. George is our favorite regular character, but we like Puddy. He was the best guest character.” He then slipped into the flat, deadpan delivery of Elaine’s recurring boyfriend, the face-painting New Jersey Devils fanatic. “‘You stole my Jesus fish.’” 

Whodathunkit, Seinfeld fans. A couple of mid-20s newlyweds expecting their first child—a daughter to be named Addison, due in late September—who just moved from Boulder to Eugene, but originally out of Rockford, MI, where they met in sixth grade. Sounds like the All-American story of a million young couples across the country carving out a life for themselves in a new city. 

Except that this young husband is a professional distance runner, a genotype for whom life is ruled by a hard, uncompromising routine of up early every day, out the door to run over the same well-traveled loops, his meals and bedtime repeating with a monotonous regularity. Especially in a year with a World Championships in Osaka, Japan, in August, and an Olympic Trials Marathon to be contested on November 3 in New York City, any move, much less one from a long-term altitude base to one at sea level was, as Seinfeld’s David Puddy might say, “Gonna be rough.”

“Moving from Boulder was incredibly difficult,” admitted Ritz, back in his normal voice.  “And the fact that my wife is going to have a kid soon made it even more difficult. But I don’t think it’s any different from a pro baseball player getting traded, and packing up and moving. And we tried to keep it as smooth as possible.”

But baseball is a playing game, not a training game, and travel is the players’ routine. So the question still hanging was, why the move?

“After my injury three years ago [a third stress fracture since 2002], I was thinking, we have to keep changing something,” he said. “Every time something happens, we can’t sit idly by.  We have to be proactive. And the thought came to mind that I’d never been hurt until I came to altitude. I’d been there six years, and that’s when the injuries happened.”

Ritzenhein arrived in Boulder in the fall of 2001 to run for coach Mark Wetmore’s Colorado Buffaloes after a sensational high school career in Michigan, during which he won back-to-back Foot Locker national cross country titles in 1999 and 2000. After finishing fourth as a freshman in the NCAA cross country championships, he suffered his first setback when a stress fracture in his right femur forced him to miss his sophomore harrier season in 2002. Another stress fracture followed, this one in the left femur, a probable compensation reaction to the first. There went spring track in ’03.

Ritzenhein got back on form in time to win the NCAA cross country title in November 2003, outkicking Ryan Hall of Stanford. But then, after an NCAA-record 27:38.5 in his debut over 10,000 meters in the spring of 2004, Ritz developed yet another stress fracture, this one in the fourth metatarsal in his left foot. That injury forced him to hobble through the 2004 Olympic Trials 10,000 meters in Sacramento. He finished 22nd, but because he’d run the Olympic “A” standard earlier, he got his place on the Athens Olympic team. He was far from recovered in Greece, and he dropped out of his Olympic race—the only DNF of his career. The 2004 Trials and the Athens 10,000 remain his career low points.

“My first Olympic experience was not glamorous,” Ritzenhein confirmed. “I’m glad I went, but if I never made another Olympic team, it would be an unfulfilled experience for me.”

When yet another stress reaction developed at this year’s USA cross country championships in Boulder (Dathan took third behind Alan Culpepper and Adam Goucher after leading early), the nagging little voice in his head became insistent.

“We weren’t ready [to move] three years ago,” he said. “We wanted to try other things first. But they didn’t work. So we finally said, ‘Let’s move to sea level.’ I’d always trained better there. Last year before the New York City Marathon, I just trained so well at sea level, and before this year’s Healthy Kidney 10K and ever since, things have just been falling into place.”

The choice of Eugene as a low-altitude base followed the advice of coach Brad Hudson, with whom Ritzenhein began to work after turning pro in the fall of 2004 and thus giving up his remaining eligibility at CU. Hudson’s own running career had found its peak in Eugene. 

“I’ve been looking to come back to Eugene for four or five years,” said Hudson, a former University of Oregon Duck and a two-time Columbus Marathon champion, “and I’ve been trying to convince all my athletes to come as well. Not to turn our backs on Boulder, but when Dathan got hurt this past winter I said, ‘You have to look at sea level.’ Altitude develops an athlete quicker, but not everyone recovers the same. And Dathan recovers better at sea level. I believe in altitude, but more as a stimulus. And if you look at the athletes who weren’t born at altitude, they don’t gain as much living up there all the time.”

With an expecting wife to consider, Ritzenhein knew that the decision to pack up and move to a new city wasn’t his alone. But in Kalin (nee Toedebusch), who also ran for the Colorado Buffaloes, Ritzenhein had a partner who understood the rigorous requirements of a professional athlete.

“We had considered it in the past,” she said, sitting on the couple’s back deck overlooking looking a shady green glade. “And while my dream is to be in Michigan where our families are, for now it’s go with the flow. It’s not bad. Plus, I love Eugene. You can’t beat the weather. Well, the sun is nice [in Colorado], but it’s cool here—you can go outside and enjoy it. The people are similar to Boulder. Both have that Midwest feel, very welcoming. But while people in Boulder are very active, cycling and hiking, here in Eugene the focus is on running.”

Perhaps like no other city in the country, Eugene—nicknamed Track Town, USA—celebrates its running heritage. When you arrive at the Eugene airport you are greeted by an Oregon Track Club display showcasing University of Oregon legend Steve Prefontaine. There is the Pre Trail to run on in town, and other trails wind up and down the Willamette River. Close by Ritzenhein’s new home, a three-mile woodchip trail runs along Amazon Drive. There’s the Jogger’s Bar and Grill downtown, and, on the corner of Willamette and East Seventh Street, Track Town Pizza. You can’t escape it. 

The centerpiece of the city’s track culture is Hayward Field itself, the monument to track and field that sits like a crown jewel in the middle of the bustling University of Oregon campus. Built in 1919 for football, the stadium took its name from Bill Hayward, the Ducks’ track coach from 1904 to 1947. This is where the Prefontaine legend took shape. Where names like Chapa and Salazar, Manley and Moore, Burleson and Dellinger, Centrowitz and Cruz and McChesney once strode. Where Bill Bowerman inspired Phil Knight, and the two of them ignited the running-shoe revolution and invented Nike.

Today, the deep-green field has been pulled back and torn up as the place undergoes a renovation in preparation for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Track & Field next June. But even in tattered repose the place exudes a grand elegance like running’s version of Fenway Park or Wrigley Field. Only venues in Europe such as the venerable Bislett Stadium in Oslo or the Olympic Stadium in Stockholm can compete with the excitement generated by the 11,000-plus Eugene fans when they take up their rhythmic clapping, banging on the boards in cadence with the runners. Athletes are performers, and there is no theater in track with a better design or history than Hayward Field. 

This is where Ritzenhein ran his 8:11 two-mile personal best in May at the Prefontaine Classic, one of the country’s premier track and field meets, and this is the environment that Ritzenhein has adopted to propel him through the next phase of his career arc. In this city, where the ghosts of running legends are a constant presence, he has chosen to try to add his name to the pantheon, to make his own legend.